


Camera Obscura

by dorothy_notgale and Tromperie (dorothy_notgale)



Series: To Die as Lovers May [9]
Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Armida No, Boudoir Shoot, Cisswap, Depression, Desperation, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/F, Murder, Objectification, Photography, Post-Theater-Fire, Rule 63, Sadism, Sexual Violence, gaze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:21:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale%20and%20Tromperie
Summary: 187x--1930Armida has her prize, her new vital lover--the one who appeared and sparkled so wonderfully in Paris. The one she killed for, and the one who killed the coven in return. The one she threw Lestat off a tower in favor of.Pain is a thing from which vampires recover, or so she believed. But Louisa's pain cuts deep, hollows and empties her even as she remains in Armida's reach. Louisa does not flee her, but neither is she present.All Armida wanted was to have her; she has a facsimile, instead.It's so difficult to get a reaction. Maybe a human photographer is just what the doctor ordered.





	

"Why do you never cry?" Armida asked once in 1926, lounging in daring silken pyjamas and putting the final touches to the evening's careful bob; a snip here or there with her delicate scissors.

"Why do you wish me to?" Louisa replied serenely, sitting at her vanity (silly name) inattentive to the pots of paints, the curling tongs, the pins and the tubes of mascaro.

"Because, cara mia. It is known that mourning reduces through the achievement of catharsis." Louisa knew this, Armida was certain; she was so well-studied. "Your pain would be less, if you wept."

"Well, then," Louisa smiled, twisting her jet hair into a rope about her fist and slicing it off wholesale. "There you have it. I don't wish it to be less."

Closer, the fallen locks piled about Armida's bare feet.

"Do you wish it to be more, then?" she asked as she took the old, eight-inch fabric shears in hand and stood behind her woman. She observed how winglike shoulderblades emerged between spaghetti straps, felt the uneven broomlike bits of ruined hair.

Louisa's green eyes met her own in the mirror; they blinked levelly before she said, "You are certainly welcome to try."

The bloodstains would never leave their white velvet upholstery.

~*~*~*~

Louisa was no purely spiritual creature--not a serene, idealized image, but rather the bearer of the uneven flush and voluptuous sensuality of the so-called Pre-Raphaelites. Something in the parted lips, the sway of full-grown hip, the hair so silky-smooth no combs could contain it all the night long…it all hinted at an absorption with the pleasures of the world, for all the owner’s mind would mire itself in the pains.

She’d been beautiful, when they met. Flushed with a kill and love for her darling flaxen-haired boy and gentle awakening hopes for the future; a raven-haired vision.

Armida had wanted her badly, as badly as she’d wanted another a hundred years earlier, and perhaps that previous loss had made her ruthless. But Louisa was not _un_ receptive.

And she’d waited nearly an entire week after the fire to at last hold her fair-won love.

Louisa no longer came to her, walking in a haze through the streets of Paris. But she didn't run away, either, though Armida was noisy in her approach. That night in the Louvre had sparked hope in her, the rush of that delicate almost-brush of her new love's lips nearly a match even for the kill.

She should have known there was no poison more deadly than hope.

As they traveled, she told herself that Louisa was different, that she carried the past as a heavy pendulous weight about her neck. Armida didn't understand it, standing in her hall of dead, unmoving memories. But she wanted to. And if death had taught her anything, it was patience.

She was patient through Greece, as Louisa looked on dead ruins; through Rome, when Armida found herself sick with vertigo at how nearly-yet-not identical the world around her was; Louisa's lip had curled at the Vatican, and she would offer no explanation but a laugh as dry as dead leaves. She had stayed close, though, perhaps through some obligation, her hand stroking Armida's hair in the private car of a sleek new railway.

Each time she sought answers, Louisa had only scattershot musings to give. Once, twice in a year it would flower into something beautiful, some insight that was evidence enough that Louisa still lived. Armida did everything in her power to nurture those slow blooms, hoping to make a garden. She poured over art and history, which she recalled Louisa had asked her about Before (and that was the trouble, wasn’t it; there was so little of Before, and an infinite amount of After). She built a monument to the preservation of mortal thoughts and aesthetics, mullings over the meaning of existence and great philosophers, in hopes that Louisa might look at it and think, perhaps a little, of Armida. She would have done anything, if only Louisa had shown the slightest desire to ask her for _something_.

It was for nothing, all of it. The signs grew fewer, and her patience slimmer, and at last she coaxed Louisa to America. There was the heart of the world, she thought; there was life, and mortality, and some spirit so palpable even one as broken as she could understand it. And still, Louisa was silent.

Nightly Armida dressed her lover in the finest garments, the richest jewels. She took her to the opera, the symphony, everywhere one might move in society. All must see how treasured Louisa was, so that Louisa herself would know. And Louisa refused her nothing.

And still Louisa did not wail, or curse, or weep. And even Armida knew that was wrong.

The first time, Armida was gentle. Such care she'd taken, though her Louisa could be no maid. Not with lusty Lestat as her maker, her lover for so many years. Still. Louisa had loved Armida, and that was reason enough to be kind even to the ruined.

She'd begun as her Maestra had taught her--ensured that Louisa was fed and cosseted and visibly prized.

And after, when they stole home with Louisa full and nearly glowing, Armida stood on tiptoe in the lift and brushed her lips just above the clasp of Louisa's necklace.

The shiver at such a touch-- _that_ she knew. That she recognized as love.

Louisa asked no questions when Armida guided her in by a hand on her tightlaced waist, when she reached up to remove combs and pins and so freed that obsidian waterfall of hair.

No nymph, Louisa. Not with how she looked after Armida removed her finery piece by piece, until the glorious whole was exposed (the jewels she left to sparkle in the gaslight).

She'd taken Louisa's hand, then her lips. They'd parted easily to Armida's tender kiss, let her slip tongue and then fingers inside with no resistance. Soft and plush, yielding to her direction.

Armida pressed her lover down, back onto the sumptuous modern mattress with its damask curtains and embroidered counterpane. Red, deeper than carmine; like some berry or synthetic dye, too unstable to last but utterly vivid in the moment.

What Armida felt from her was knifelike, awed and fascinated and helpless as a bird before a snake. It took Armida into memories; to Venice, with her angel. To the catacombs, with her devil. She’d felt this before, and always it had been called love.

She was no Lestat; she’d not reject one who loved her so. She’d _keep_ that love, draw it to her breast and guide it until the owner had no thought but her.

"How I adore you," she'd whispered, diligent in her touch, thorough with her kiss. "How fortunate I am to have you." She'd broken the skin with utmost gentleness, entwined in body and mind. This close, she could taste the flickering embers of Louisa's mind, the velvety musk of her grief.

But Louisa wasn't hers, not truly. She lay still and passive, wrists together on the pillows as though tied, breathy sighs escaping her lips when Armida touched her. But when they broke apart, she behaved as if that were the whole of it, smiling and turning her head as if to get up.

"Am I so unsuitable, that you don't wish a taste of me? The knowledge you traveled so far to find?" False knowledge, but then. Experience was the best teacher. She knew that well enough.

"You wish me to..." no maid at all, yet her cheeks flushed.

"It's the way of things between lovers, isn't it?" Only whores accepted that they would be used with no thought for their own pleasure. Whores and slaves. Armida had been both.

"I suppose."  

Armida couldn't resist touching her mind, knowing that she had never done so with Lestat. "She was a fool to deny you."

Before that would have sparked ire, curiosity. Now Louisa only smiled. "I am content."

And perhaps she was, but--still, she did not cry, or laugh, or react, the smile on her face but a painted scrim over something too level to be alive. Armida _fed_ upon girls who felt so, the ones with no life in their futures.

She did not wish to consume her lover. Not entirely.

Each time she took Louisa to bed, she waited for the passion, the need, to break free. She toyed, teased. She straddled Louisa, savoring the unfamiliar sensation of womanly hairs against her shaven cleft.

A study in contrasts, so Maria would have painted them: The mature temptress putting hands on girlish innocence. And how funny, to be so reversed. But there was pleasure in playing the elder, in cajoling and cosseting, dressing and undressing. And Louisa pretended at innocence so well, so much more accurately than should be possible.

A proper girl, undemanding, chaste, and Armida misliked that placidity.

Though she desperately wished she could _see_ such images of them, from outside.

She was still gentle when she took her from behind in their box at the opera, jeweled choker cold against the corner of her mouth. A peaceful ambush, leaning over the back of the seat and fondling as Louisa watched the stage, drinking Louisa's little mock death as the show climaxed in its own tragedy.

And when Louisa shuddered from the sensation, Armida dove down, down, in search of the answer--the key to unlock reactions.

Louisa's mind was not so open as it had once been; often Armida would attempt to cocoon herself in its depths only to find the reverberating static of a single word: _nothing._ Blank as a fine, fresh canvas, enticing if Armida hadn't known better. She'd given her lover the keys to lock her out, and now had to sneak in like a common thief--through the blood, through distraction, and all manner of petty trickery.

"Tell me what you're thinking of," she'd say in desperation as she trimmed Louisa's long hair in the latest fashion.

"You know," her lover would answer, even as she found and entwined their fingers.

Armida cursed that child as the years went on, the seed of all of it. The cold, knowing smirk he'd shown her at the last as she proclaimed his death sentence.

_'You've lost her forever, now."_

Over and over she heard those words: that night, as she'd honored a victim's final request; and in the greying moments of dawn, though she rarely dreamed. When Louisa let her near, she'd thought it was over.

But tenderness brought nothing; the slightest smile, perhaps, that was gone as quick as a dissipating cloud; a gentle touch that acquiesced but rarely hungered.

Armida _hungered_. She wanted no expectations...but she needed desperately to be wanted. To quell the ache and uncertainty that was killing her year after year.

And if kindness would do nothing, she knew the alternative.

There were memories, fragmented and hidden, of the passions Lestat had practiced upon Louisa. Strange, familiar; nothing at all like the things Nicola had recalled of her laughing country wildling, but so very much like what Armida had gotten that one night she'd ensnared her Devil's unwary mind for a kiss. Death had changed Lestat, perhaps, turned her cruel; but that very cruelty had kept Louisa alive, and Armida could do what she had to.

There were so many ways to prick and poke at such softness.

She began with the obvious; 'careless' nails nipping into the most delicate flesh, too-rough hands 'accidentally' bruising limp unstruggling wrists.  Mouth 'overcome' by passion, tearing flesh enough to leave a bruise. For Louisa fed little, and was lusciously weak and human as ever. (That had appealed to Armida, once; now, it was cause for concern. Reason to keep on.) Small flinches, squeaks of pain louder than sighs of pleasure. Less than nothing.

The bruise, an incidental detail, at least accomplished something.

A blush. A prickle of shame.

 _Propriety_. Of all the silly things.

"Drink from me," she had said. "It will heal."

"It will heal anyway." Louisa had pressed her hand to her throat, already combing her hair to fall over the mark. "We will always be what we were. Unchanging, just as you said."  

"Do you want to die?" she'd pressed, seeing her own future crumble in those vivid eyes. "Is this all immortality is worth to you?"

"It's no matter if I die, is it?" She spoke of it like the thousand petty chores mortals concerned themselves with. "But I have no particular compunction to finish the deed, and I doubt you would allow it anyway. So." Her flat, even gaze had taken Armida in wholly. "Why do you ask me this?"

It had left her reeling for almost a week. She remembered the small flare of life born from that feeling Louisa called shame, and she chased it.

"Does it concern you?" she'd said as she hemmed Louisa in against a tree, the flowering park around them only a stone's throw from prying eyes. "That you might be an outcast? That someone might know you keep a woman as a lover?"

Louisa's hand had stroked her face, a small smile on her face. "Shame is what you did to that girl in that theatre. It can only be visited on the innocent. I'm afraid you'll find none in me." And she'd brushed Armida away as if she were nothing, walking away with her gaze in contemplation of the moon.

But she'd seen what she'd seen. In that moment, she'd truly understood that small measure of Louisa's feelings.

Hadn't she?

The bruises turned large and blotching, and that night before the theater, they ran red. Louisa carried a scar on her back for almost a week, and her knuckles had turned marble-white as she clutched the vanity. But she hadn't cried. And she hadn't spoken of it the next night, when Armida's touch was soft once more.

They lay together naked, at Armida's insistence, her need for careful study. And she'd found herself tracing her love's belly, thinking of her mistress.

_Suppose-_

Her nail traced featherlight across the skin, raising gooseflesh in its wake. "Louisa."

_Suppose you've lied to me._

Louisa looked up from the little volume in her hand, a treatise on their supposed kind that offered no solution to the dead. "Hm?"

_\--it would grow eternal, eating you from the inside._

"Were you truly with child when you died?"

Louisa's eyes flickered, dark lashes fanning up and down like the wings of an insect. Her face was porcelain.

"I--" Her tongue poked out to wet pale lips. She needed _blood_. "I never told you any such thing."

"You didn't need to," Armida replied, drawing invisible concentric circles about Louisa's navel. "You know I can hear you, when I wish."

And yes, this stirred something, caused some little door to crack and send slivers of light through. Sparks of memory, like snowflakes on Andrea's tongue. But not clean.

Bloody.

Soft flesh trembled beneath her touch. Flesh that had, perhaps, held something more. Proof of the most potent sort that her love was fully a woman, grown and lush and fertile. Complete.

Alive and capable of creating life once, though now it was all counterfeit. Yet--

Armida had already had her once, but the rumblings she sensed were strong. Familiar. She could understand memories of men's hands and the parts between their legs, the choice-that-was-not to _behave_ and soon, the burn to do it again, to be worse. The wonderful, soothing bliss of cold hands and teeth, all unexpected in the night.

"Stop," Louisa said, slow and anaesthetized, as Armida dug in her claws and her thoughts.

Louisa was _hers_. She would fix it, given time.

"Armida..." There was a tremor in her love's voice, and that only spurred her on as images of Lestat pressed in on her. Lestat had made Louisa happy, at least for a time. Had swept in and seemed an angel, when she was a devil of the worst sort. A ruiner of lives, beautiful and terrible and _stupid_.

She'd left Lestat crumpled and broken at the base of the tower. No less than she deserved. And still she hadn't died, and this thought concerned Armida more than any other. She turned it over often, like a bright gem, and her own hope confused her.

"Armida!" Her love's voice, her pet, roused her to the feeling of hot blood on her hands, the sight of muscle and tissue before her. Louisa shouldn't be so exposed. She was delicate. And there was no child, of course. Maria had lied. About so many things.

"Hush," she said, and began to lap at the wound as she filled Louisa's mind with light. Last sunsets stolen and refracted back. Everything Lestat had given her, but _better_.

Even Louisa had to concede for that injury; her teeth at Armida's wrist were clumsy, instinctive hunger and desperation driving them instead of arousal, but it would do. It had to.

She wanted, again, and made a circuit of them, feeding Louisa and fastening herself to a sweet hard nipple in a parody of that thing which never was. Louisa was so open, so simple, her mind playing memory upon memory of Lestat's hands and mouth and hurts.

But the gifts Armida granted with each mouthful of blood went unremarked on, despite the whimpers and gasps, the shaking movement of Louisa's hands (never, never before, Louisa _never_ touched _her_ \--)

Until she slipped in a few images of lovers. Patrons. The feeling of eyes on her, being beautiful and desired and then _used_ , the ways a good girl wouldn't be.

Louisa, beautiful Louisa with her smooth empty belly and full swollen breasts and her _experiences_ , made a strangled sound of reaction then, and it was hopeful. Any feeling, even that shame, was more than the dead thing that had taken the place of Armida's love.

 

***

 

They never spoke of that night, after. They moved through an endless mist of nights, the doldrums Armida had spoken of in that little cell beneath the theatre, and all the while she wracked her brains in a panic. There were so many tools one could use to sting a heart; the physical represented only one part. Words from a cutting, accurate tongue had roused Lestat, and Armida was determined to safeguard this secondhand lover better than the last.

Lessons: learned, tried and expanded upon.

Kindness gave her nothing, the gentle sincerity of their earliest days now lost in ashes with the rest. What she said meant nothing to Louisa, no more than the song of a passing bird--less, as Louisa could look upon nature with something less than dull animosity. She felt herself growing colder as the nights passed, her own death beating at the lid of her coffin and saying _soon, soon_. If she allowed Louisa to die, it would mean her end too.

And so she went on chasing that feeling, shame. The one trick that had showed any hint of promise. She thought of the spectacle she'd made of herself, desperately seeking Maria's approval those long years ago. Patient Maria, who must have loved her. Lestat was a liar, after all. She knew liars. She was the best of them.

(She thought too often of Lestat; thought of the fact that the self-proclaimed Gentleman Death was still out there, no doubt plotting revenge. Thought of what Louisa might do if she knew this, and how the terror of finding out was beginning to be outweighed by the hell of staying as they were.)

The only solution then was to bring the event to their sanctuary, where Louisa retreated to be near but never truly in Armida’s presence. That would rattle the petrified coffin they were building for themselves. That would bring it all back. She came to believe this, as a drowning human grabs at rotting driftwood.

She had caught sight of a photographer some weeks ago, and found herself dressing in newsboy clothes and cap to shadow him. The glint of metal and flashes of light, the death of tintypes for these new, sensitive papers was a brief foothold that fascinated her even when Louisa's interest refused to be roused. The young man himself was unremarkable, careless with his tools and tired from the meager wages the sale of his wares afforded him. It was tiresome how often a sum of money could buy the human fancy of a soul.

It was all arranged: the time, the venue, the payment in excess of any reasonable charge. He seemed a bit disconcerted, a touch worried, before Armida led her woman into the room which would serve as their 'studio'. She carried a small valise and her hopes, laying them all before a cheap painted backdrop of gardens.

Daylight gardens--how enchanting it was, for a moment, to imagine seeing Louisa beneath the sun, though her radiance made the scrim's falsity all the more plain to see.

(Perhaps Armida would have the photos tinted, humanlike colors placed by art where none truly existed.)

When he saw Louisa in the lights, though, all his concerns seemed to vanish. It was the strangest spell, inconsistent and undirected, which Louisa cast on mortals (only mortals--for surely Armida's devotion was true. Surely Lestat's clumsy feelings hadn't been touched by a mind sealed against her.) His lips parted; he dabbed sweat from his brow with an already crumpled handkerchief. His reaching chemical-stained hand sought Louisa's, too careful, too courtly, and he thanked her for such an 'opportunity.'

Had she modeled before?

Would she allow him a few test shots, of her profile?

Only for his portfolio, and of course he would be discreet. Of course no names.

Louisa turned for permission the first few times, clearly uncertain of the role she was meant to be playing as the man snapped painstaking shots of her elegant visage. Armida had already warned him to spare no expense, and he seemed more than happy to oblige. The smell of powder and smoke was soon thick in the small room.  
  
They were quickly lost to each other, Louisa sleepily enchanted and enchanting as he directed her to pose this way or that against the backdrop, to drape herself in careful carelessness across a delicate white chaise. He loved his death dearly, this one.   
  
"That's enough," Armida interjected after a time. She felt Louisa dim as she came near, her mind beginning to close even as Armida snatched at the edges of it. "Save your film."   
  
"Did you wish to model as well?" Louisa seemed charmingly baffled, as if a task put to her wouldn't be _worth_ pursuing.   
  
"No. I've done enough of that in my time." Once that would have set hunger in Louisa's eyes, a need to know, but now she only nodded. "My only desire is to see more of you." She traced her hand up Louisa's back, finding the catch at the back of the neck that hid the modern zipper.   
  
"Our guest is still here," Louisa reminded her, still uncertain of the trap closing around her.   
  
"He's going to help me in preserving this moment," she smiled. "Immortality, my dear. Won't that be novel?"

“I don’t--” A wash of translucent pink tinted her cheeks. “You’re joking.”

Silly girl. She must know by now that Armida never joked.

“It’s all right, miss,” the mortal stirred himself, speaking as to a frightened rabbit. “It’s very artistic. Traditional.” His mind wavered, fretting. _Had she not been informed? The younger one had been so certain--_

He’d never done such a set before. He worked clean studios, normally.

“Come now, Louisa.” Armida buried her fingers in the full, out-of-date Gibson Girl updo, relishing its softness and the way it would soon work free of its combs and pins. “Nudes are the oldest sort of art, far more beautiful than these modern _popular_ images.” She invested a contempt she had never felt in the words; what cared Armida for whether a beauty were clothed or exposed, compared to the sensuality that could be preserved in a moment? “It’s no shame, to be seen so. Allegory, myth, no?”

“I’m not art,” Louisa said, so wrongly. Every movement, every shiver proved her wrong.

“I can help,” the boy said, reaching a hand nowhere near far enough to touch their victim’s cold flesh. He would look, not touch. _He would look and look and look, later. He had photos from other studios, cheap and lacking art. Lacking such a haunting beauty. He could do something with this. He could make her feel as lovely as she was._ “You were posing so well, before. Let me?”

His dark curly hair fell over his forehead, into grey eyes so intense they were almost violet in the odd lights he employed.

A refusal seemed on the tip of her tongue, a refusal of all of it--the boy, the studio, Armida (who held her breath, hoping for the ferocity of a fight). But then those green lights, will o’the wisps, went out and sealed all their fates.

"Would you please," she said as an order and not a question, and the boy devoured it. He mistook exhaustion for nerves, reserve for mystique. Armida was beginning to wonder if she had too.

The photographer was out of his depth almost immediately, baffled by stays and strings and buttons. He had all the ineptness of a virgin, though she could see he wasn't one. Curious, she laid her hand on his own as he fumbled with a zipper.

"You seem to need a hand." And she smiled her own coquettish smile, which meant nothing to her and everything to so many others.

It meant something to him--something odd. Off. He flinched away from Armida’s touch, evading any brush of fingers, and then he seemed to dislike her practiced skimming-away of Louisa’s dress without his assistance.

“There,” she said softly, meeting his gaze just for the pleasure of seeing him back down as she ran a gentle fingertip down Louisa’s spine to the top of her vest. “Much better.”

He agreed, whatever else he was feeling, and he licked his lips before speaking. “Yes. It’s… Please, miss, step into the lights. _Alone._ Don’t face me; look over your shoulder.”

Something happened inside him, when Louisa complied. Some strange, flickering thing, when she stood beneath that false sunlight, hips in their tap pants cocked and unfashionable breasts hidden by the twist of her body and the fold of her arms. Lips parted, tasting the air, and her eyes were brighter than the flash as she stared back at him and Armida.

It was rare, and the camera seemed some kind of dark magic as it worked, capturing that Louisa no one else could reach. Just a little more. If she just pushed a little harder.

"Stop." She walked into the light, feeling the way the boy stiffened as she destroyed the sanctity of his fantasy. She traced the line of Louisa's silhouette, looping a finger under the strap of that white silk vest and pulling it loose. She could feel the boy stiffen, top to bottom, but her eyes never left Louisa.

"You were made for this," she said, low, and Louisa looked down.

"Is that all?" And it was hard to discern whether she meant the words or the photos.

"It seems a waste of the boy's time if we stop now." She looked at him then, and he started, mouth snapping shut.

He held his hand out as if to steady his marble lady, still never touching. "Please, miss. I… they really are the best I've ever taken. We could, if you're uncomfortable we could go on alone."

Armida bristled, jealousy almost smashing the confines of the game. She was businesslike in pulling loose the sweet little bow, unbuttoning until the vest slipped low and clung over Louisa's nipples.

He waited until she stepped out of the spotlight, careful not to capture a hint of her shadow, as though it didn’t fall over this whole set. As though when Louisa swiveled on the little faux-stone bench (creaking white-painted wood, wobbling under her weight), it weren’t for Armida.

It was pathetic, seeing him salivate and hunger. Needing and believing in something that couldn’t be there.

“Tilt your face up, to me… put your hands down. Lean in.” Louisa followed his instructions, eyes only on him and mind shut, but it was for Armida. She stared into the single black glass eye of his little camera as into an abyss, likely seeing into the mechanisms as no human model ever would. The filmy top slipped lower with each move he directed, until it finally lost to gravity and he captured the flicker of chagrin at being subject to his and Armida’s gazes.

Armida had seen it all before. He hadn’t. Still. She couldn’t fault his appreciation of her woman’s form.

 _Perfect, perfect. She’s getting the hang of this. Just have to get her to play more…_ His initial contact with Louisa had made him believe things that vanished in the boudoir. Armida stepped up silently, shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing his view.

“Take it off,” he rasped. “Unbutton. Slowly. Lean back so we can see your fingers.” Click, click--he’d stopped with the tripod and switched to a little handheld device, moving and tilting it in with care. Caressing it. “Open it.”

He was heavy with need, there in his cheap brown flannel pants. He was thinking of what he would do, after this, when he took the negatives and developed two sets of prints, one for whoever had sent Armida and her woman to him.

It struck her that if she wanted these memories, these flashes of false truth, the boy would have to walk away this night. The thought irritated her as she watched him, smelled him slavering as he exposed Louisa's nude form to the light. He hurried to bring over a divan for her to recline on, and Armida smirked as she watched him struggle, hating him in spite of the fact that she had invited him into all this.

He wasn't interested in Louisa. He wanted the woman in the photographs.

( _Like you_ )

His eyes lingered too long at her fingertips on her hip, at the cleft of her buttocks and the stray lock of hair escaping down her back. Louisa was contemplating something distant, far from either of them. Armida tried to press her, to reach her, and failing that to invade, but her dying lover yielded nothing. And her face was a mystery, unreadable without aid though inarguably beautiful.

She began to pace the makeshift little studio, becoming restless as sweat formed on the boy's brow.

"Tell me how it works," she demanded, initially seeking a distraction from herself and nothing more.

“What?” He frowned, thinking her an irritation, an interruption to his affair.

“Photography. Tell me.”

“It’s light.” He didn’t want to, but she made his mouth work nonetheless as his hands sweated. “It comes in the lens.”

“Reflected. From our model. Like the moon.” She could puzzle it in part; camera obscurae had been much used in studios when she lived, and though her mistress’s preternatural skills had needed no such aids, the apprentices had had one. Armida had posed for it, for their perspective exercises, more than once long ago.

“She’s not just a moon.” He thought Louisa carried her own light in her luminous skin, her glowing eyes. So had Armida. “It comes in the lens, and it hits the film. Marks it. It has to stay in the dark, or it’ll get overexposed. Miss,” he raised his voice. “Turn more. Raise your hands to your hair. And smile.”

“The light burns it?” Armida touched his shoulder and he allowed it, far from his body and instead in that little black box that was capturing Louisa’s body in light.

“Wider. Show me your teeth.”

“I can’t.” Her lips pressed tight, hiding her monstrosity.

“Are they crooked?”

“...Yes,” she lied.

“I need something to make your mouth show, something really crackerjack. Do you have any lip rouge?” Such confidence, so certain he knew what needed to happen here.

“I have it,” Armida whispered in his ear. “If I make her mouth red, will you tell me more?”

He shuddered under her sliding hand.

"...Yeah. Yes, whatever you want." His fragile little garden was breaking apart the longer they stalled.  
Armida went to her little valise and pawed through the assortment, settling on a bright and garish shade. It would look dark and mysterious in the photos, surely. In the flesh, it would make her look like a whore.

(She knew that Louisa had rouged her lips when she was alive. She'd snatched those images because she knew Lestat had coveted them, though they shocked her not a bit; she'd thought it romantic, perhaps, that Louisa might understand her. She wasn't sure)

"Here." She twisted the cap off as she stepped into the light, and Louisa flinched as if she'd forgotten Armida was there. Nothing new about that. It was why they'd started this game.

"Look at me." She could lace it with compulsion, but she never needed to anymore. As if to make up for her dying soul, Louisa's body was ever biddable. It looked to her now, and Armida could see those sharp points her love had been so desperate to hide. She held Louisa's chin as she applied with her fingertips, not like a woman but like an artist (she was no woman and never would be, after all). When it was done she threw the pot away, hearing it impact against the wall with a satisfying smack.

"Oh....too heavy." She smiled, wicked, and saw Louisa's eyes widen ever so slightly as she realized. As Armida's lips touched hers, smearing the red ever so slightly. There wasn't even time to savor it, the whole of it meant to crawl inside that mind Armida was beginning to hate.

"There." She stepped down, wiping her lip with her thumb. "Now tell me."

He boiled, there in the dark, watching the shape in the light. It was not _unlike_ a stage, and he and Armida were both director and audience.

He hated her interference; she smirked and tugged her dress down, smoothed it daintily. Nasty girl, but so sweet in appearance.

But he had bargained, and so his mouth worked as he again raised his glass eye to capture Louisa’s holograph.

“It goes on the film, and it has to stay in the dark until I develop it chemically. That fixes it.” He shifted, uncomfortable. She touched his hip and guided him forward; he went to his knees. “Miss. Lower one hand; bend a leg, but cover your…” he didn’t have to finish speaking before Louisa complied, hiding the sweet curls that covered what would be so clear, were it Armida on that couch. Men had been there, but Armida found herself wondering whether any had _looked_ before, as she had when inspecting her prize.

“You’ll work with it blind, to develop her?”

“Red light. That’s safe.”

“Fire.”

“It makes a negative. Reversed, black to white.”

“Everything black and white. And grey.”

“Yes. Miss.” He was nearly gasping at how her eyes went to him, at the way the circle of lights sculpted her body in shadows. He captured, or believed he did, her hard nipples (arousal, he imagined, like the darkening of her cheeks.) “Miss, take down your hair.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” He jerked when Armida ghosted an affirming touch over his need, reassuring him; yes, this was his to command. Of _course_ it was. And his faded little voice went stern. “I need it for the shoot.”

He didn’t shoo her away; he hardly knew she was there anymore.

Armida wanted to _slap_ Louisa for complying.

Her hair was truly her crowning glory, black as sin even under that halo of lights. It spilled over her shoulders and created the illusion of modesty, highlighted the hollows of her collarbone.   
  
"That's perfect," he sighed. And then he slipped. "You're perfect."   
  
Armida used her invisibility to her advantage, as she always had. Her fingers undid the button of his fly, freezing him in place as he took those last, fatal photos. He'd broken Louisa ever so briefly out of her stupor. That wasn't his place. She squeezed him hard, dispassionate as his knees began to shake and only the strap around the camera kept it from smashing to the ground. He jerked against Armida's hand, no doubt imagining his model while believing her too pure to do such things. And she in turn looked deep, watched his hands as they dipped the paper and hung it, observed the scent of the chemicals in his little room. Not so indispensable after all.     
  
He came back to himself as release washed over him, only then seeming to realize that both women were watching him.   
  
"I want you to take another set for me." She breathed into his ear, and he was bright red as he nodded.   
  
"Good." She stepped back from him and wiped the remnants on her skirt. It didn't matter, after all. She reached for the buttons and stepped out. Black silk. Cliche, no doubt, but perfect for his photographer's eye. Her assets were nothing so impressive, but they needn't be. Not for this.

“Louisa.” She met her lover’s gaze evenly as she removed her blouse with its little pearl buttons. “Do you like when men look at you?”

“I don’t care.”

Armida kept her features blank as she stepped up, took Louisa’s jaw in her hand and brushed hair out of her face.

“Photograph us,” Armida said softly, turning Louisa’s features to best advantage.

He didn’t want to, but there was the clicking sound. Their reflected light, precariously captured.

“Do you like doing what you’re told?” she asked with a deceptive smile, fang showing on the side hidden from their voyeur.

“I don’t care.”

She did strike then, lip rouge smearing across her palm. The man made more sound than Louisa herself. Armida shoved, held him, had him tell himself it was just a game.

“Is there anything you _do_ care about?”

She swallowed Louisa’s answer in a kiss spurred by her own  fear.

"Can you feel anything at all?" Their noses touched, their lips brushing as she spoke. She needed Louisa to speak, because she couldn't answer the question herself. It frightened her as few things had since Santino, and in a wild moment she thought herself a fool for leaving covens behind. Louisa saw none of it, of course.

"I'm still here," was all her failed guide said. She gave the great effort of leaning forward, connecting in a bare minimum of a kiss.

But Armida knew. She knew Louisa didn't leave. And as she always did when she lost herself, she returned to the dead. When she had been disobedient, and lost, what had made her love her mistress again?

"Give me your belt." She held out her hand without looking at their audience, crushing his mind down until he obeyed her. The leather felt thick and rough in her palm.

"Louisa. Lie down on your stomach." She felt cold herself now, as if she wasn't in control of her own body.  
(That was impossible. Maria was dead. Maria wouldn't have abandoned her)

(To abandon a lover--a dependent--was unconscionable. Fragile things, valued things, deserved their owner’s care. So she’d always believed; hence her reluctance to make one in her four centuries, lest she be forced to feed them to the fire in neglect.)

Beautiful, wonderful, dead hollow Louisa chose the strangest times to be provocative, to show some spark. For she did not follow instructions precisely, but did one better, kneeling upon the worn burgundy velvet cushions (more sumptuous, more suggestive by far than the dainty white chaise) and leaning her torso over the curled arm rest.

Armida took her hair in a fist, pulling it and clearing it out of the way of the frame in one movement. The man whined as though in pain.

” _Do_ you like being looked at?” she asked, desperate within but cold without. The cosmetic marked Louisa’s bottom when she caressed it, just as though she’d already begun. As though red marks were all she’d ever grant.

“No.” Low, soft, nearly too soft for human hearing.

The leather descended with a _crack_. “Then why do this?”

Those lovely, bruised, painted and pouting lips pressed obstinately shut, as always denying Armida the thing she’d desired most from the one for whom she’d fought. No thoughts, not granted, though she knew they must exist despite how silent they’d gone.

"Answer me, Louisa!" She was trembling, though Louisa didn't see. It didn't matter what the man saw, as long as the photos went on. She brought the belt down again, and on the third time drew blood. She felt herself becoming distant from herself, as she had the night she’d realized it was Riccardo she held dying in her arms.

"You told me to." Louisa's hands clenched tight around the curve of the divan, her thighs flushed red. But her face, the most important element, was impassive.

Armida despaired. The Louisa she'd fallen in love with had struggled against influence as much as she begged for it. And Armida--hadn't she said she wouldn't force Louisa's hand? And now…

"Does that make you happy?" It had once. Even that was something.

"It makes you happy."

She came down hard on the open wounds, frantically, too harsh and too strong for a mortal. Blood trickled down Louisa's flanks, down her back, and Armida… remembered.

Old, fuzzy memories. Things she had once forgotten, down in the dark. She dropped to her knees, pressing her face to the backs of her love's legs, pressing her tongue into the wounds. What was she doing? Who was she? Why?

He was whining, back there, as she licked and sucked, remembering the searing pleasure that she’d gotten in compensation for that pain. He wanted to move, to rescue his lovely lady from the strange little girl that she obeyed.

His fingers still worked on his tool, his eyes unable to escape how Louisa flexed away from and then into Armida’s lips. He didn’t want to see this.

Too bad.

Armida knelt up, sliding her hands almost gently along a flank.

“You liked her obedience, didn’t you, mister?” she asked.

“I. Yes.” He spoke haltingly, words pulled from his mouth like fish hooks. Such lovely bait. Armida smiled prettily, stretched her arms out to fondle Louisa’s breasts as he had and hadn’t wanted. “I. Liked. How she posed.”

“Did you think she was enjoying it?” Blood spotted her pants, stuck to her thigh. “She hates it, you know. But it’s all the same to you.” She pinched, hard, feeling her nails slice goosebumped flesh; with only a fraction of her strength, she was able to shift Louisa for display.

“Miss--” He gasped it out, desperate, but click-click went the shutter. He seemed no more than that gaping black lens on a box, mounted atop his pitiful body. No face at all anymore.

"She doesn't love you." If she was to mean something, this man had to mean nothing at all. "She never even saw you." She cupped Louisa's curls, hiding them from the camera. From the world.  "Would you see her laid bare?"

Louisa was a vampire, she knew in the back of her mind. She was untouchable. But pain was still pain. She might as easily have created what she did next as an illusion. But she didn't. She wanted Louisa to feel it.   _She_ wanted to feel, as she drew her nail down Louisa's abdomen, parted a little hollow in the skin to see the red meat. The last time she had done this in a stupor. What did it mean of her now, to remake those wounds. "Would you have this of her too?"

"Oh god. Oh my god… " he was whimpering. She was laughing, and there was no humor in it. She couldn't seem to stop. Part of her sickly, truly wanted to know.

Louisa made no sound at all, even the pant of her breathing gone.

"Would you have her heart?" She circled the still bloody spot with her nail, a ghoulish witch in a child's clothing.

"Stop!" He cried just as Louisa at last wrenched free of her, hands going to her stomach in true fear. No... they were clutching too low.

Armida was at her side in an instant, bleeding. Joyous. There had been something. Not her Louisa, but life. She convinced herself there was hope yet as she poured blood over Louisa's wound, over her legs, in a baptism of blood. She stood on shaky feet, composed in her filth.

"I need you to develop them tonight."

“What?” His voice was thin, bewildered, as Louisa sat up with face blank as when they’d begun. “Is--this is a trick. It’s a dream. I’m.”

“Smile for the camera, Louisa,” Armida hissed, bringing a bloody hand to her living lover’s mouth. The broken ones did not fear death.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I won’t--I’m sorry, I knew it was wrong, I’m sorry--”

Louisa blinked and tilted her head slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said softly to him, intimate as though they were alone. Distant as if they were strangers.

“I’m sorry. I shamed you, you’re--nice girls don’t--just let me wake up, I’m sorry!” Click-click, click-click. “I won’t do it to them!”

“Show me your red lights,” Armida said. “Show me how she looks, reversed. Then maybe you will wake up.”

“Armida, this is cruel.” Sweet voice, low voice, making both their hearts leap while the owner sat placid and bloody.

“And you _care!?”_ Care about this, this worm, this pitiful little man. This _boy_ , with his cringing, terrified wants.

That would be--horrible. But something.

“I--you needn’t do this to him.”

“You’d have me be kind, cara mia?” Armida mocked. “Am I much given to kindness?” She had been, once. She had tried so _hard_ to be.

“You… are many things.” Almost, she could see sadness. Almost, she could feel memories. “You don’t have to hurt him so.”

The hand on her shoulder felt conciliatory, pleading. Felt like an offering, as though the body was what she wanted. Still Louisa’s lips twitched into something sweet below her blank bottle-glass eyes, and still she kissed Armida so coldly. _Click-click_. Armida had seen fights like this, with a pawn between Louisa and another.

“Smile, then,” she said, cupping soft cheeks in her palms. Lestat had done it better, better by far. She’d had a better hostage than this fool. “Smile for the camera.”

She killed him anyway, in the end. She left Louisa in the little studio and followed the boy to his dark room, keeping him sedate enough that his hands didn't shake as he removed the film, as he soaked it in chemicals and hung it to dry. Armida's eyes seemed made for the low red lights, and for a second her heart quickened in fascination at the process of it all. She waited with him, absently stroking his hair, and when she knew the work was done she sated her hunger in the dark. She clutched the photos greedily, searching them for some proof of the small glimmers she'd seen.   
  
She saw a beautiful, familiar face, captured and reversed. Light trapped on a canvas. Burned, just an afterimage. Like the the young man and the boy in her courtyard who'd crumbled to dust beneath Louisa's hands. Just a remnant of something no longer there.   
  
She moaned, low, and clutched the images to her. She might give her love to them and fare better. Now that she was alone without the boy the machines terrified her, pointless without someone who would appreciate them. Louisa would stare and be stared at, and none of it would matter to her. She would have no answers the way she was now.   
  
Sick, numb, Armida gathered up all of the photos and brought them out. Louisa looked at her with a knowing look, as if she'd expected this all along. Armida showered her in black and white ink.   
  
"For you," she said, rather pointlessly.

“I know what I look like.” She had dressed again, blood hidden by her sedate clothing but still _there_ to smell.

“Do you?” The last image, the fatal one, was so lovely, even with the colors washed out. The pretty white fangs, peeking from between black lips; the soft shattered smile. The eyes, possessed of an otherworldly glow.

Louisa shrugged. “I know… how my appearance makes you all react. It’s not inaccurate.” She sighed, minutely.

 _Us all._ As though Armida were no different than anyone else; but then, hadn’t she striven for that? Tried to replicate those steps, find those rhythms and rituals?

For Lestat, that anger would have made Louisa flinch, or behave. For Armida, only quizzical frowning and a permissive nearness.

“Are you happy, Armida?” Louisa asked against her shoulder, tired, gentle. Gentle as Alistair had been at three hundred, hideous and begging for the fire.

She wanted to hide in Louisa's arms, take comfort in that touch. She did nothing. "It doesn't matter."   
  
"Doesn't it?" But Louisa didn't pursue the question. It had risen from old conversational muscles. Already Louisa was looking away from her, gone somewhere Armida couldn't reach.   
  
She pulled on her jacket, which hid the blood little better than it would've kept out the chill. She secreted a few of the photographs away, including the final one, and tucked them close to her chest. "We should get back," she said, making her last fatal choice. "There's something I need to tell you."


End file.
